SLOW CRAFT With Mana in Fatu Hiva
Together, three generations of women crafted a traditional love bouquet to welcome a daughter back home to the island.
SLOW CRAFT With Mana in Fatu Hiva
From transmitting Marquesan traditions in the Bay of Virgins To selling tikis in Tahiti
Photography by Julien Girardot Text by Aline Dargie 2016 SYNOPSIS Fatu Hiva has a rich history of artists crafting objects to hold an individual’s mana, or supernatural power. One’s mana may be strengthened, instilled into objects and transmitted through generations by habitually practicing slow traditions like hand carving, poeto fishing, paddling va’a, and ra’hau, Marquesan medicine making. About a decade ago in the western world, a renaissance of slow craft and slow food movements began. This trend is reflected from farm to table restaurants to craft theory acedemia to DIY (do-it-yourself) online networks. The high tech overload balance righted as the early connected Millennial generation came of age. Now, a growning number of people are setting the smartphones aside so their hands may manipulate materials that feel more real. It is a pleasure to let one’s creative spirit or mana come to life throughout the craft process.
Slow craft, a good old friend of mana, for artists in Fatu Hiva involves a personal, spiritual connection from an artist’s heart to hands, while making one of a kind artwork. Techniques are transmitted through generations as families take time to make things together. Business minded artisans have evolved their practices to market demands, consequentially not spending as much time being sensitive to mana. Today, wood carvers in Fatu Hiva use more power tools than hand tools, but some artisans use only hand tools, out of necessity or passion. Slow craft traditions in Fatu Hiva are nevertheless beginning their own renaissance as tenacious members of the upcoming generation take time to appreciate and practice.
Cover page and above: Simon uses unstructured time, on days when he feels inspired, to carve one-of-a-kind pieces with mana spirit. An example is his prized penu, the Marquesan word for pestel, a common tool in local kitchens. When I asked to see the penu, he stood up from his carving throne and walked through his garden of bananas, basil and mint to the family kitchen.
Simon proudly returned cradling the nine inch long object in both hands. He held it up to his heart in silence, then presented it to me with open palms, in the same manner he delivers communion to the elderly or disabled, whom can not leave home to go to church on Sundays. With this genuine gesture, he shared the embodiment of the spirits for me to savor, entrusting me with a sort of special information.
Fatu Hiva, photographed from a sailboat riding the tradewinds south towards the Bay of Virgins
Hanavave village, Fatu Hiva, May 2016
Sophie forages for local plants by the riverside to crush with a penu and infuse into cold water to make a rahau, or natural Marquesan medicine.
Using a penu, or pestle, on a hoana, or board, to make poi poi, a delicous mash, using unburied fermented breadfruit and fresh turmeric. This grandmother makes and eats this healthy dish with her family almost every day. Sexual symbology is celebrated in traditional Marquesean culture. Carved stone penus, Simon told us, “are traditionally only touched by women due to the phallic resemblance.� Today, both sexes may daily grasp it to grind herbs and root vegetables, an enjoyable step in processing various rahau, natural medicines, and kai kai, family meals.
Aromas of fresh flowers of ylang ylang, basil, thyme, and the fragrant roots of the vetiver grass died orange wih turmeric roots, fill the air as the love bouqet, bouquet d’ amour in French, is crafted. The nuanced balance of different scents is incredibly tantilizing and rich. The bouquet stimulates senses and awakens sweet memories. Parisian perfumers could take tips from these artists.
For historical demonstrations, this family also makes Aeu Pipi. This is a towel made of sacred banyan tree tapa, or bark cloth (just like the tapa cloth under the herbs picutred to the right), massaged with grated coconut, ylang ylang, basil, mint and tiare. This one-use taboo object is used by both sexes to clean each other after love making, then buried in the earth.
Before Protestant and Catholic missionaries converted Fatu Hiva’s indigenous spirit-worshiping artists into artisans praying to one God in the 19th century, ancient Marquesan tikis were crafted to hold the mana spirit of an ancestor or god. Passionately carved by strong hands with motifs representing one’s life story, these ancient tikis were designed to forever protect a family’s home from evil disturbances. All but a few ancient tikis were either stolen or traded by early Spanish and French colonialists, or burned or defaced by missionaries. Churches were then built directly on top of the marai, the spiritual grounds, where they once majestically stood watching over the safety and well-being of the tribe. Visitors are not invited to photograph tikis in the wild. Although many artisans carve tikis today, the tradition that supports it is nearly extinct. A handful of ancient tikis are still locally believed to eternally hold the real mana they were made with, and today safely rest in uninhabited places in the jungle, not moved for centuries.
Stone carver Simon and his wife practice carving some pieces slowly, using a unique duality of powerful mana and the spirit of Christ to inform his movements with hand tools. Hand carving is used for finishing fine pieces for the Marquesan exhibition. Simon handcarves unique, one of a kind pieces on days when he wants to take a break from his production runs of tikis or during frequent power outages.
Simon says power tools make his carving process “too fast for me to think about putting mana inside, but they are necessary to keep up with the market.� Simon is a treasure in the community, holding knowledge, contacts and a reputation of carving and selling big tikis. He has landed big ticket contracts to sell his work to hotels and supermarkets in popular tourist destinations like Tahiti and Bora Bora. Tourists and collectors purchase his smaller tikis at the Marquesan Exhibition and bring them traveling all over the world.
“...balance time between smartphones and smart hands, by taking breaks in chasing money and material dreams to develop a sensitivity to slow craft.�
Posed like a tribal chief in his carving throne creatively constructed of odd pieces of found wood, Simon finely carves a walking stick, switching between hand and power tools. He takes thoughtful breaks in his work to respond to my curious questions with humble and honest eye contact. Through his actions, Simon inspires the upcoming generation of Marquesan Millennials to balance time between smartphones and smart hands, by taking breaks in chasing money and material dreams to develop a sensitivity to slow craft.
To the left, Tahaki holds up a heavy ebony tiki in his workshop. He uses the profits mainly to pay for the construction of his new cememnt block house, and to put his daughter through private Catholic school on Hiva Oa. Below to the left is the official safety officer of the town, a personable man in place of buerocratc law inforcement. He wears a reflective vest and catches up with the latest local chalala, gossip in French, as he monitors the village on foot. He carves platters and bowls, some shaped like the fish he catches, out of rosewood and ebony logs. Below, the coach of the soccer team, also the MC at the Marquesan Exhibition in Tahiti, and maker of delectable dried bananas, is an avid bone carver too. He carves new pieces in his workshop using bones and shells that friends send him from all over the Pacific, including deer antlers from New Caledonia and lamb bones from New Zealand.
Jean Vaikau at age 67 stands proud as he takes a break from hollowing out his dugout canoe with hand tools. “When they see me fishing they will say, where is the engine? cha!?” His motivation to build this canoe is to continue the traditions of the ancient people and enjoy the slow process. As John lights up a cigarette he tells us, “modernity brings problems and drives people to drink,” recognizing the local problem with alcholism. Like the majority of locals, he has been smoking since age 10. “It is written in the Bible that times will change, and its happening now. The problem now is that people are too much on the screens, TV, internet, texting, not working enough with their hands in nature. It is up to the people to decide the future. Youth have time, do they apprentice? no, they want to eat steak and chips and watch TV. When a young couple runs out of money, they now have to go back to mom’s house, not into the nature to survive.” Jean knows this from the experience of raising six children in Hanavave, most of whom have chosen to persue modern careers in Tahiti. “Before, to make kai kai (food in Marquesan), they needed just wood and time, now they need modern stuff that breaks.” Jean balances his slow, natural ideals with a few outboard engines and propane bottles in his workshop among his homemade hand tool collection, and a house connected to electricity.
“‘When a young couple runs out of money, they now have to go back to mom’s house, not into the nature to survive.’”
“This masterpiece is left to bare a blanket of moss in shame, or perhaps wisdom, like an ancient tiki left in the jungle.�
Simon’s most controversial work is this large stone tiki he carved for the dock of Hanavave (previous page). Simon designed this tiki to be displayed at the end of the jetty, to welcome the boats as they entered the harbor. It got mounted in a less prominent location by the boat launch ramp instead, so it could be closer to the electrical box, enabling it to potentially be lit up by a dramatic green light at night. During one month of carving using a homemade herminet, a chisel-like hand tool, Simon had plenty of time to evolve both his thoughts and the physical form of the dock tiki, as it was laboriously revealed from its stone. “I felt something inside me that was strong,” Simon remembers, with a serious voice and confidently calm look, as we sat on thick, but-polished roots of a rosewood tree growing from the family’s carving workshop. Today, when asking a couple of youthful vaa fishermen at the dock what they think of the sculpture, they say, “everyone knows that is a big kiki (penis) from the backside, with the front disguised as a tiki to appropriately welcome tourists.” Unlike the stone double tiki, that Simon also carved, at the entrance of Hanavave’s neighboring rival village of Omoa, Hanavave’s dock tiki is unpainted. This masterpiece is left to bare a blanket of moss in shame, or perhaps wisdom, like an ancient tiki left in the jungle. As Simon says, “this tiki will its mana forever, and shall never be sold or moved.”
“‘You see, this is women’s work’”
Sitting in her garden adjacent to the Catholic church, accomplished tapa cloth artist Sarah Vaki deftly demonstrates her craft with a passionate and coy grin. On a Saturday afternoon in the village of Omoa, Sarah’s tapping sets the beat for wild rooster soprano solos layered over low pitch prayer chants echoing from the church. The ancient process of tapa cloth making involves using a series of ridged wooden mallets to tap the inner bark of certain trees on top of a flat rock, spreading apart the fibers and flattening the bark into a piece of cloth. Each tapa maker has his or her own rhythm
and sensibility to texture. Sarah’s masterful experience is easily appreciated when one regards her finely textured, evenly thin, painted mulberry tapa cloth. One step before the final tapping, when the cloth is almost totally thinned out, Sarah rolls and folds up the cloth into a symmetrical form, and presses it in her grip to resemble a vagina. She looks up from her work and into my eyes to tell me, “you see, this is women’s work” gracefully, she unrolls the tapa like a red carpet in a controlled flick across the stone, and continues tapping.
Sara Vaki’s sister Tutana Tetuanui Peters is the ambassador of Masison Grelet in Omoa village Fatu Hiva. The intimate museum holds tribal treasures and artifacts from times past. The first colonialist of Fatu Hiva, the Swiss man Francois Grelet, built this colonial style home. Grelet departed San Francisco on a cargo ship bound to develop a coffee plantation
in the Marquesas. In his twenty eight years on the island, Grelet developed a coffee plantation, a general shop, wine distillery, gardens of American fruit and vegetables, and a well kept art collection on display today. July 2016 marks 100 years since his death. One may wonder about the mana resting in these objects as Tutana shares their stories.
This artisan’s drill, light and fan, above, are powered by modern hydroelectricity. The river, pictured above left, with a woman slowly weaving palm frond baskets, creates the driving force for the freshly constructed hydroturbines, to the left. Before hydroelectricity, the whole village relied on a diesel generator, except from midnight to six in the morning when it was shut off to save costs on diesel.
Since the launch in February 2016, people living in Hanavave can, and do, use electricity around the clock, especially for televisions and freezers; consequentially pay higher bills. A few families in Hanavave do not rely on electricity to keep food fresh, and practice the slow process of using a pit called an umu. They bury fruits, fish, pork and vegetables with layers of leaves and coconut palms in the ground, to preserve them for enjoying off-season.
When the Aranui V arrives in The Bay of Virgins every three weeks, the population of Hanavave village doubles or triples for the day. Provisions are delivered directly to the one room shop in Hanavave, below. Busy with locals and cruisers from sailboats alike, this is the day to buy popular imports that ran out stock since the last shipment. To the left, crates of tikis are loaded onto the Aranui V to travel for eight days at sea to the Marquesan Exhibition in Tahiti.
Continuing our spontaneous travels as journalist and photographer, Julien and I follow the tikis to Tahiti aboard the Aranui V. We liked thinking about all the hundreds of tikis sleeping aboard in their boxes, while we rested in our cabin.
“The consumer finally appropriates her mana in her chosen tiki.” Today, artisans craft objects with a modern worldly mélange of techniques to sell to tourists, to afford to purchase imported goods. Faster craft using power tools enables selling higher quantities with competitive pricing, commoditizing traditional craft and giving less meaning to individual objects. This is fueled by the demand of tourists buying tikis, whom largely choose one tiki over another tiki depending on their personal aesthetic desires, not because of who made it, or how and why it was made. Seated at the Aranui V’s cocktail bar, two French women admire their new tikis, chosen for their colors, with Marquesan friends. The consumer finally reappropriates her mana in her chosen tiki as she places it in the context of her style. It is a popular coloniast concept to bring a ‘tribal’ treasure back home to the westen world as a souvineer.
To the left, Tikis without mana carved by Simon for sale at the Marquesan Exhibition in Tahiti June 2016. Above, running Sarah Vaki’s booth is a millennial generation family member who likes to visit Tahiti. She is selling monoi, tikis and tapa. American tourists trade drill bits for small carvings and solar powered lights for monoi.
Marquesan ear ornament for a man, made of ivory from sperm whale teeth at the end of the 18th century. Aquired when the KA Webster collection was sold at Christie’s in London in 1980.
The museum of Tahiti and her Islands has an impressive collection Marquesan tikis and carvings on bone, in their climate controlled archival environment, behind glass.
“The good time is now for those who slow down... to craft famliy meals”
Simon carved this penu for a pretty penny on comission for Carrefour, an international supermarket chain. We are shocked that Simon’s name or signature is not present in Carrefour, instead it states the name of a different island, not even Fatu Hiva. This is a large version of Simon’s prized penu that he showed us on the first page with humble open hands. We now realize his strong connection to the small model is not just because of mana, but also the profit it represents. The stone penu is glued on a laser-cut wood pedistal, in the middle of the main entrance to this busy shop. Its presence reminds shoppers of a simpler, more natural time. The good time is now for those who slow down, by using a penu, or any other hands on method to craft family meals.